I'm a senior reporter for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph. This is my personal blog. I'm also cycling commissioner for London, but nothing below represents the view of the GLA or the mayor. For that, go to the official City Hall cycling blog.

There’s been an interesting set of reactions to my job offer as Boris Johnson’s (part-time) cycling commissioner, revealed yesterday. On the one hand, we have the main opinion-formers in the London cycling community, who seem to be cautiously pleased. David Arditti (aka the blogger Vole O’Speed) called my statement yesterday“short but promising… [I] have time for Gilligan and I’m willing to give him a chance. It’s a highly political job and he might just be the right man.”

There was inevitably a second group of reactions. A small number of people who could fairly be described as partisan, such as Labour’s Len Duvall and the Ken Livingstone blogger Sunny Hundal, have damned it as “cronyist.” But as Mayorwatch’s Martin Hoscik – another man who could never be described as a patsy for the mayor – points out, all mayors are entitled to appoint political supporters to political jobs, and do so routinely without controversy. Nobody would or should call, say, the Labour assembly member Val Shawcross a crony because Boris’s predecessor appointed her as chair of the fire authority.

As was also pointed out yesterday, I’ve been fairly critical of several of Boris’s policies, including his cycling policies, in the past (though the future we have been discussing at City Hall is starting to look better.) I also, with my then Standard colleague Paul Waugh, broke perhaps the single most damaging "cronyism" story of Boris’s whole first term: the fraudulent use of public money by his deputy, Ian Clement, for meals with his mistress, which led to Clement’s criminal trial and conviction.

I hope, too, that our cycling policies will command cross-party support, and will not be particularly partisan, because in cycling all four of the main parties at last year's election signed up to essentially the same things. Still, it is of course true that I am a strong supporter of Boris. That, I’d suggest, is an advantage, rather than the reverse: it gives me, and cycling, more influence with the mayor.